Islamic charity under spotlight after being accused of promoting extremism

The Charity Commission is now investigating after an undercover reporter found staff praising terrorists. 

The chief executive of an Islamic charity has stepped down and an investigation launched after the organisation was accused of supporting extremism. Global Aid Trust, which claims to raise money to educate the underprivileged and alleviate poverty around the world, was launched in 2004 and has an annual income of more than half a million pounds a year. There is also an ongoing fraud investigation by the National Terrorism Financial Investigation Unit. The charity’s chief executive officer, Rizwan Hussein, has now stepped down.

It is one of a number charities exposed by ITV1’s Exposure programme for allegedly spreading extremism, including the Steadfast Trust.

Posing as a volunteer, an undercover reporter begins working at Global Aid Trust’s headquarters, where he is introduced to a worker called Shaffiq Shabbar, who quickly confesses an admiration for hate preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who has inspired a string of terror attacks. 

Mr Shabbar tells the reporter: “They spread loads of lies about him…He’s a scholar and basically he was imprisoned and after he came out of prison he started to incite hatred and telling the Western Muslims to bomb. He incited bombings basically. Bruv, he was a brilliant guy though.” 

In another section of the documentary the charity books a preacher called Dawah Man to speak at an event on a boat on the River Thames. He was recently banned from speaking at the University of East London after referring to homosexuality as a “filthy disease”. In his speech he makes a series of anti-Semitic comments…

a spokesman for the Charities Commission said what had they had seen had raised “serious regulatory concerns”. The spokesman added: “In the case of Global Aid Trust, we were already dealing with issues of a similar nature and the new evidence will be added to our own.”

:: Exposure: Charities Behaving Badly is on ITV at 10.40pm on Wednesday.